The answers Cheney - and others - will not like.

The CIA did not create Al Qaeda.

 

Ah yes PB crawls out from under his rock to give us the definitive and conclusive word on the matter. I'm so thoroughly convinced, forgive me!

 

Really?
You know that the cia funded osama bin-laden, right?

 

The CIA provided funds to resistance groups via ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency. However they did not create Al Qaeda. In fact I don't think the CIA and OBL had any direct relationship.

A lot of information on the issue is in this link. Although the link uses non-government sources, it is a US government link, so if you want to discredit it without even reading it please go right ahead.

http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-318760.html

 

As I’ve pointed out the problem with intelligence information is that it is open to interpretation, and should always be approached with a high degree of scepticism. People are entitled to their opinion but the most dangerous thing is to come to intelligence ‘evidence’ with convictions of what it will tell you because with such a mindset it is very likely you will interpret it in such a way that it does back up your viewpoint.

I gave a good example of this above the neo-cons wished to show the Soviet Union as an aggressive and technologically advanced enemy. They could not find any real evidence for this so they claimed that the lack of evidence was the evidence that it must be so, because only an aggressive power would hide the ‘fact’ it had hidden weapons (which later turned out not to exist).

For example you cite the case of Abdul Rahman Yasin but here is another point of view –

Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the bombers in the 1993 World Trade Center attack, flees to Iraq where he moves in with a relative and receives a monthly stipend from the regime ([9]). FBI agents on the scene, including Assistant Director James Fox, the agent-in-charge, determined that Iraq may have assisted in the bombing. Iraq had actually made an offer to the Clinton Administration to trade Yasin in 1998, but the Clinton rejected the offer.[10] Neil Herman, who headed the FBI investigation into the 1993 World Trade Center attack, noted that despite Yasin's presence in Baghdad, there was no evidence of Iraqi support for the attack. "We looked at that rather extensively," he told CNN terrorism analyst Peter L. Bergen. "There were no ties to the Iraqi government." Bergen writes, "In sum, by the mid-'90s, the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York, the F.B.I., the U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, the C.I.A., the N.S.C., and the State Department had all found no evidence implicating the Iraqi government in the first Trade Center attack."[11] During the 9/11 Commission Hearings, former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke was asked about whether Yasin going to Iraq established a connection between Saddam Hussein and the 1993 WTC attack. His response was unequivocating: "But the investigation, both the CIA investigation and the FBI investigation, made it very clear in '95 and '96 as they got more information, that the Iraqi government was in no way involved in the attack. And the fact that one of the 12 people involved in the attack was Iraqi hardly seems to me as evidence that the Iraqi government was involved in the attack. The attack was al-Qaida; not Iraq. The Iraqi government because, obviously, of the hostility between us and them, didn't cooperate in turning him over and gave him sanctuary, as it did give sanctuary to other terrorists. But the allegation that has been made that the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center was done by the Iraqi government I think is absolutely without foundation." (9/11 Commission Hearing, 24 March 2004 [12])
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein_and_al-Qaeda


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But let us look at this from another direction.

From what I can tell you would want see any link as justification, even if “just a little bit”, for the Iraq invasion.

Yet from what has been produced so far all Saddam seems to have been doing nothing more that harbouring a known terrorist and many would claim that the US is guilty of that. He is also accused of training terrorists but the US has a long history of training what many would call ‘terrorists’ as well. If Saddam was ‘evil’ and his government should have been overthrown because he harboured and trained terrorists then what does that say about the US?

Was Saddam a bastard, most definitely, was he a supporter of terrorism, very likely, could he have been working hand in glove with al qaeda, not sure but from what I have seen I’d say probably not. Have US governments trained and supported terrorists, sorry to say yes.

It there for seems a tad hypocritical for an American to be claiming that support of terrorism is justification for war and the toppling of a country’s political system while they support a political system that has been involved in just those things.

The thing is if the neo-cons had believed that they had the evidence for Saddam’s involvement in 9/11 they would have used it. Such evidence would implicate Saddam and his regime in the participation of a direct attack on the US, in other words an act of war. There would have been on need for UN resolutions or questions over the legality of the invasion. The US would have been totally in its rights to attack.
As it was the Bush administration went with the WMD’s, even when the evidence for them wasn’t that overwhelming.

**

But is a debate over the justifications for the invasion the right debate?

I mean if you want to pick a fight you can usually find an excuse, well founded or spurious. From “you looking at my girlfriend” to the invasion of Poland. And there is a long history of suspect excuses, such as the sinking of the Maine and the Tonkin Incident.

Now as interesting as the justifications are on their own what I would ask is was the policy they were meant to justify, justifiable?

You see in may opinion getting rid of Saddam wasn’t wrong but the neo-con’s motives and methods were to me deeply flawed and liable to go badly for them and much more importantly the Iraqi people.

As I’ve stated before the motives and methods in relationship to Vietnam were in my opinion the major factors in the US loosing that war.

Now the circumstances are different but the question of the wrong motivations and methods being employed are still very much to the fore.

In Vietnam American leaders thought US interests were under threat from a communist domino effect in south east Asia. In Iraq the neo-con faction believed the incorporation of Iraq was in the strategic interests of the US. The views and the wishes of the people have in both regards been either of a secondary nature or ignored.

To me the priority was the interests of the Iraqi people, the toppling of Saddam was a step toward that goal but not the goal.

And war was an option not the option.

As to turning Iraq into a pro-American ally and base from which the US could dominate the Middle East I don’t believe that is in the best interests of the people because I cannot see it achievable without the kind of government the US help establish and supported in Iran.

 

But just as I contend that the US went into Iraq for the wrong motives and using the wrong methods, I also am of the opinion that the US is likely to leave Iraq for reasons and in a way that is likely to cause unwarranted bloodshed and pain. Some thought it would be a cakewalk the US would get what it wanted and leave it hasn’t turned out that way so they wish to cut their losses and run. Those that opposed the war contend that the US should never have been their so should leave. To me both are about the US and Americans not the Iraqis that would be dumped in a power vacuum, for just as having no plan for a post Saddam Iraq was so damaging so having no plan for a post occupation Iraq could be worse.

So far all lived heard about is cut and run, packing the bags and leaving in the night, and many on both sides of the divide seem shrug of what might come after, civil war, possibly the kind of factionalition that was so destructive in Afghanistan. Can people be so callous, can people not realise what death, destruction and misery that could bring?

Shouldn’t people be debating what could be done and how?

 

But a US withdrawal, without proper care, would make the situation a lot more similar.

With factions even from the same religious and ethnic groups vying for power. Remember that when the kurds became semiautonomous in the 90’s they ended up in civil war (with one group asking for help from Saddam’s forces).

In such a situation it will be inevitable that regional powers will become involved just as in the Lebanon and Afghanistan.

**

So what would I do, well I’ll put many money were my mouth is and probably piss everyone off but here are a few musings for discussion.

The first thing would be for Bush to get up and admit his administration fucked up royally, and then sack Cheney and Rummy their aids and advisors.

Then the command of the US troops in Iraq would be handed over from US president’s control over to a UN committee along with running costs and a large reparation payment.

Iraq would be split up into three cantons, Upper, Middle and Lower, each with guarantors that have signed up to a UN resolution of their duties. These would be about establishing security and infrastructure the protection of minorities’ etc, with the future goal being a whole and democratic Iraq. They would also sign a limited defence treaty in which an attack on one canton was an attack on all.

The most controversial thing would be the guarantors, in the Upper region, the mainly Kurdish area, it would be say the EU and US. In the middle two Sunni states, such as the pro American Egypt (or Saudi Arabia) and Libya with its anti-American credentials and in the Lower Shia area the only mainly Shia state, Iran and another ‘neutral’ power.

Overseeing this would be the UN Iraq committee chaired by a UN appointee.

**

Remember these are just some musings written doodling to hopefully get the ball working and see if people have any other ideas.